MIA02LA050 · Mooney M20J
Mooney M20J · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during takeoff
From Vince's Condominium Association Airport (FA60) to Montgomery Regional (Dannelly Field) Airport (MGM)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA02LA050
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Mooney M20J
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M20
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N201XL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vince's Condominium Association Airport (FA60), Lake Placid, FLTo Montgomery Regional (Dannelly Field) Airport (MGM), Montgomery, AL
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Takeoff
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel starvation
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight departed VFR and just as the aircraft became airborne, the engine lost power. The pilot lost directional control, and crashed into an adjacent orange grove off the left side of the runway abeam a point about 3/4 way down the 3,000 foot runway. The aircraft received substantial damage and the pilot sustained minor injuries. Postcrash examination of the aircraft revealed the right wing contained no fuel and was the fuel source selected on the fuel selector. The left wing was nearly full. A postcrash examination of the engine's fuel injection distribution block revealed no fuel. Postcrash engine run revealed a fully operational engine. The pilot performed a visual check of fuel aboard the evening prior to his early morning departure, and noted 26 gallons of fuel in the right wing tank and 32 gallons of fuel in the left wing tank. He did not perform a visual check of fuel as part of his preflight walk around inspection the morning of the accident.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to perform a proper preflight inspection and his improper fuel tank selection for takeoff, resulting in a loss of engine power on takeoff due to fuel starvation, and the pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the aircraft resulting in an uncontrollable descent and collision with orange trees and terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA02LA050
- Event ID
- 20020122X00092
- Case number
- MIA02LA050
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1bb3065e5831ec8c7c1b88fb10e5736c9e254cdeb1fd6cf9debfcfc04a168e04; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:47:19.779Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative states "The aircraft received substantial damage and the pilot sustained minor injuries"; nothing in it describes the airplane as destroyed.